Today, we discuss the fantastical tales of Santa Claus, the myth and the legend. But before we jingle in, we want to update you on the conjuring house drama. Talk about a scientist who’s experimenting on herself, and help a ghost find his body.

The NEWS:

-Update on the Conjuring House

-Scientist Self Experimentation

-Ghost Trying to Find Their Body.

TRANSCRIPT:

Good evening, probably cursed listeners, and welcome to episode 14 of our podcast. Today, we’ve discussed the fantastical tales of Santa Claus, the myth and the legend. But before we jingle in, we want to update you on the conjuring house drama. Talk about a scientist who’s experimenting on herself and help a ghost find his body. I am your probably cursed host, Sheryl. And I’m Chris. I hope everyone is ready to get into the Christmas spirit.

Mm-hmm. But before we get into any of that, we have some updates for all of you. If you’re listening to our last episode, you heard the jack-in-the-box start jingling and singing. And making its jack-in-the-box noises midway through our broadcast. This is the same jack-in-the-box from, I think it was episode 12? Yep. That was that artifact. An update for that, it has been sold. Some lucky person has got that spooky jack-in-the-box all for themselves now.

My friend wishes that person luck.

I think they’re lucky to get in the first place. I hope you’re happy with the jack-in-the-box.

Mm-hmm. Also, an update on the puppets that we had in our probably cursed store. I can’t remember what artifact number that was.

I think that was artifact two.

Oh, wow. The marionettes. Yeah, so the marionettes. We went to Deadmonton House and we were able to find them as part of the spooky haunted house.

Mm-hmm. In the puppet factory.

Yeah. Would recommend. It was lots of fun. Yep.

Thank you for purchasing those from us. He’s a public figure-ish. He’s the Deadmonton runner, Ryan Kozar, here in town. Thank you, Ryan, for letting our cursed dolls be part of your haunted house. That is it for the updates portion of our show. As we do at the start of every episode, we will load in three news stories for our Lord Kanarvon Curse-O-Meter to get it properly calibrated for the main topic. Sheryl will supply it with the main, with the first story now.

This article is titled, The Conjuring House Ordered to Cease Operations, November 13th, by Sandy Hall for NRI Now News. While The Conjuring House owner is waiting for renewal of their operating license, the Department of Labor and Training has ordered them to immediately suspend the operation of its businesses and remain suspended until it provides proof of insurance, stating that the business has been operating without workers’ compensation insurance since May.

That’s definitely cursed.

Just…it’s not hard to get insurance.

If you saw The Conjuring Movie, you know that you need insurance on that place if you have employees working there.

Yeah, 100%. Luckily, or maybe unluckily. It’s the latest in a series of events that have kept The Conjuring House’s owner, Nunez, in the news this year. Nunez, who purchased the house in 2022 for $1.5 million, has had several public conflicts with her former staff, including mass races nations, firing of one staff member because she said a ghost told her he was stealing from her.

I remember we covered that story.

She has also been accused of withholding insurance money from two other staff members who lost their possessions in a barn fire on the property. And then most recently, in late October, Nunez was charged by Burriville Police with driving under the influence and engaging in a police chase. On Monday, November 18, the Burriville Town Council is scheduled to discuss the business license renewal, included in Nunez’s renewal application was an unsolicited seven page essay titled, The Laws of the Cosmos Part 1 by Jacqueline Marie Nunez. The person who has saved all humanity.

I like that it was an unsolicited essay, but she wrote, they probably just wanted a bunch of forms filled out and she just gave them a whole handwritten essay on top of everything.

Did they, I hope she didn’t fill out the forms 100% and it was just her handing in the essay being like, nobody needs these forms filled out, you just need to read my life story and how I save the world.

Uh-huh. If you make it long enough, they’ll just skip to the end and then give her her business license back.

Some excerpts have been released from the essay. First one is, Discarnate Intelligence Energy with the Laws of the Cosmos is embedded in every scripture written and in every major religion on this planet. It makes so much sense.

I had to like reread it twice because I was like, this sentence is bizarre. The Supreme Intelligence is the prime cause of all inherently contain all truth and the discoverable proof to withstand the most arduous and rigorous scientific and research. Nothing within all truth requires or necessitates blind faith as Christianity in particular espouses.

This just sounds like gibberish. It’s a word of salad.

Sounds like she was trying to start her own cult and just kind of come up with her, I don’t know, manifesto. She also states, I am Jacqueline Marie Nunez, owner of the Conjuring House and I am the person who has saved all of humanity.

I thought you were gonna say, and you killed my father, prepared to die.

Apparently that’s how she concluded her essay, so. I don’t know what to say. She also says, this document is fully protected by the United Nations copyright laws and the one world government of the Eastern Hemisphere headquartered in China and Estonia.

Yeah, it doesn’t make sense because the Conjuring House isn’t the Western Hemisphere.

Not just that, but I don’t think Estonia and China are that close together. No. Yeah.

They are if you have a tiny globe.

That’s right. Also included with her application for renewal is a page on the Conjuring House letter head addressed to Dear Effin United States. You will never defeat or destroy me at any time now or in the future, so Effing be it.

You know, we talked about before, she might be possessed by a demon. This is sort of thing that a demon would say, you will never defeat or destroy me. Yes. At any time now or in the future.

Be careful, we might have a second the devil maybe do it court case. Oh yeah. She he’ll since to our podcast and she suddenly comes up with that argument. We’ll know where she got it. Also included is a bullet point list stating, I am no longer required to pay any taxes whatsoever. I should do that. I know we should. Mike Wood, who is the town manager, you do not have a lease hold for the township. And finally, Steven Lynch, who is the chief police. Gosh, what an unfortunate name.

I’m going to form a Lynch mob. Come on mob.

Anyway, Steven Lynch, Saudi Arabia is going to call you very soon.

And there was like no explanation on what that meant. No, they could just be wishing him a happy birthday. They could be asking about tourism because I don’t know who you call the person in charge of Saudi Arabia, but he wants to come over and party. So I got to say when I grabbed that article and we were ready to record, we were delayed from recording. So the town council, it said in the article we’re going to meet on November 18th. Yes, which is passed. Which is passed. So I have an update on that article’s article. Oh, excellent. I’ll just read off the top here from the Providence Journal. Town council voted unanimously Monday afternoon to deny a renewal of the conjuring house’s license to operate as a business over concerns about missing paperwork and approvals in the paranormal attractions license renewal application and erratic behavior on the owner’s part.

So I was right. She didn’t fill out any of her forms. She just submitted the essay.

So back to Michael Wood, the town manager. He’s quoted here saying quite frankly, there’s too many problems on the site and it’s unfortunate because it was great business for the town in the past. They need to get their act together before you issue them a license.

I would love to host an attraction that’s big enough that everyone, it increased tourism in your town. Yeah. That’d be pretty epic.

I bet we get all sorts of special treatment once we open the probably curse museum. Yeah. And the millions start coming in from all over. That’s right. Chilas loaded in the first story into the charsometer.

I’ll bring in the second one here. Ghost trying to find his body. This is from October 31st by Jamie Brassington for Birmingham Live. Paranormal investigator Charlie Harker. No relation to Jonathan Harker who fought vampires.

That’s right. Claims his house is being haunted by multiple spirits after conducting several paranormal investigation in his home. Charlie runs the afterlife dimensions UK paranormal investigation team alongside with his partner, Teresa Hughes. During his latest investigation in his kitchen, the team was trying to communicate with spirits using the spirit talker app, which can pick up the voices of ghosts. Charlie says, a strange thing keeps happening with that. Every time we use it, we get the same thing asking, where’s my body? Where’s my ashes? I was buried here.

Now, have you downloaded the spirit talker app? No, I haven’t. We should download it and see what it does in our house.

It’s true. Keep an eye on our social media to see our tests on our haunted museum.

If the app is randomly generating phrases, and it just happens to randomly generate those phrases all the time, how is that really evidence that there is a haunting?

It was just a lazy coder who just put in one sentence. They’re like, this will get the kids to shriek and then they’ll delete the app immediately.

They didn’t realize that legitimate ghost hunters were going to try to use it for investigations.

Charlie goes on. Then there is one saying, where is my bones? Then you think, is something under the house? Is something buried under the house? I don’t know. I think it’s female 100%. We live in a row of houses, but we are on the end. I would say it is a 1950s era property. It’s not the first ghostly activity he’s noticed. A previous investigation on his stairs managed to capture on camera a doll in LED balls seemingly tumbling down on their own.

This guy is just investigating his house. Does he investigate anything else?

I wonder if it was during the pandemic when he was like not allowed to leave.

He can’t do ghost investigations at anyone’s house.

Charlie also spoke of how last year his home became haunted by a sinister and evil spirit named George, which followed them home from an investigation in a wall-saw graveyard where Teresa became possessed, which was followed by poltergeist activity at their home including a knife that they claim was thrown across the kitchen. Currently, Charlie no longer feels the presence of George, but whenever they talk about ghosts at home strange stuff starts to happen. He said, there is paranormal activity taking place, but not in a physical way. There are spirits here. They are residing here, but they are not showing any physical presence at the minute. As soon as we open an investigation, this is when things become more active and things start happening.

I mean, that’s what you want if you’re a paranormal investigator.

It’s true. Usually it’s the other way around. Turn on the cameras and then all the furniture just falls down from where it was floating.

Nothing happens. Just all sit there in silence talking to yourselves.

Yep. Even if we are sitting down discussing it, a general chit chat, this is when you will hear knocking noises. We were having a chat on Saturday night before the investigation and then we heard something go, BANG! It stirs that activity up. The house has been quite quiet, but I think we’ve got more to come, especially after that investigation.

I thought it had gone, but it hasn’t. He added, We’re not sure who is haunting our house. We believe it is more than one spirit. The spirit talker, when we used it a couple weeks ago, said, There are children here. I believe that the children were responsible for throwing the balls down the stairs and playing with the dolls. I believe there is a female here, 100%.

I mean, if you’re going to have ghosts in your house, children throwing things down the stairs seems like typical children behavior.

Uh-huh. We should do an investigation of our house.

I’m already on the way to download the app right now. Nice. It’s the third suggestion when I start… I guess it’s very popular. Yeah, it also costs $8. Spooky. Pracey. That’s fine.

You want to talk to ghosts? It doesn’t come cheap.

No. If it doesn’t have annoying ads like some of the other apps that we’ve played with, I’ll do it.

As long as it’s those Zaputo cheese ads that just go blaring in the middle of your investigation. I have got the second story loaded into the Curse-O-Meter. Sheryl will input the third and final news story.

Alright, this article is titled, Scientist Experiments on Herself. And it’s from November 8th by Zo Corbin for Nature.com. A scientist has successfully treated her own breast cancer by injecting the tumor with lab-grown viruses. But she has sparked discussion about the ethics of self-experimentation.

I don’t know. If you want an experiment on yourself. Here’s a guy in the 40s or the 30s that ate scabs of patients who had some sort of the potato disease. Just to prove that it wasn’t caused by… Like it wasn’t a virus. Yeah. So, you can do what you want.

I think Mad Science does still have a place in modern-day research.

And it’s not good to experiment on people unwillingly. So, if you’re going to do it yourself, have at her. B.I .T.A. Hellasy discovered she had breast cancer at the site of a previous mastectomy back in 2020. It was the second recurrence since the mastectomy. And not wanting to face another round of chemotherapy, she decided to take matters into her own hands with an unproven treatment called Uncollic Vero Therapy, or OVP. And she has now been cancer-free for four years. Awesome. Yeah.

Lucky her. OVP is an emerging field of cancer treatment using viruses to both attack cancerous cells and to provoke the immune system into fighting them. Hellasy isn’t a specialist in OVP, but her lab experience in cultivating and purifying viruses gave her the confidence to attempt it herself. Over a two-month period, the research-grade material freshly prepared by Hellasy was injected directly into her tumor. Her oncologist agreed to monitor her during the self-treatment with the agreement that they would switch to conventional chemotherapy if things went wrong.

The approach seemed to be effective. The tumor shrank and became softer. It detached from the muscle in the skin that it had been invading, making it easy to remove it surgically. Analysis showed that the OVP had worked as expected and provoked Hellasy’s immune system to fight the tumor cells. Hellasy felt she had to publish her findings, but received more than a dozen rejections from journals, mainly because the paper involves self-experimentation. Boo. Yeah, it feels a bit short-sighted. Mmm.

Just let her…just let…just publish the paper.

What she needs to do is she needs to get the doctor that was doing the treatment with her, just put her name as the lead researcher on it, and then it doesn’t look like it’s self-experimentation anymore.

Jacob Scherco, a law and medicine researcher at the University of Illinois, says the problem is not that Hellasy used self-experimentation, but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatments and try something similar.

I mean, just do what they used to do on TV and just have a little message that says, do not try this at home.

I mean, I think if you want to try it, you should be allowed to try it. Chemotherapy is terrible, and from what I’ve heard from people that have had to go through it, it’s not fun.

Could self-experimentation be that much worse than chemotherapy? I mean, who knows?

Scherco also notes that people with cancer can be particularly susceptible to trying unproven treatments. However, he adds, it is also important to ensure that the knowledge that comes from self-experimentation isn’t lost. So then why can’t you publish it?

This is just some guy adding in his two cents for the article.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Good, good. Halcy has no regrets about self-experimentation or trying to publish her findings. The treatment requires so much scientific knowledge and skill, she thinks it is unlikely that someone will try it themselves.

Just too hard. Yeah, well… People are just going to try and just cram in any two viruses they can get their hands on. That’s right. They’re going to get their two sick kids to sneeze on an open wound.

Maybe that’s how we get people to get vaccinated. The experience has given her own research a new direction. In September, she got funding to investigate OVT to treat cancer in domestic animals. The focus of my laboratory has completely turned because of the positive experience with self-preument, she says. Nice.

I feel like lab mice have the most curious recounts here out of all the animals. And like, we’re the last in line to get them.

That’s because of ethics.

I suppose so. It’s unethical to not treat the mice first. Yes. Alright, that is our three news stories for calibration. We’ll get the Curse-O-Meter to tally up the results now. Alright, activating Curse-O-Meter. Please stand by. And the results for the first news story about the Conjuring House losing its license, the Curse-O-Meter says… Probably cursed. Something’s going on with that lady.

Yeah, she might be possessed by demons. Who knows?

Might be possessed by the demon schizophrenia.

One of the things that wasn’t mentioned in the article was when she was pulled over by police, she said that the reason she was running from them was because she was afraid. But she wasn’t drinking. She was just afraid of the police, which I don’t know what causes you to be afraid of the police.

Yeah, the policeman’s body cam footage is available online and you watch it and she’s just being drunk and belligerent. She doesn’t look that afraid.

No. So, yeah, something is not right with her. Maybe it is the ghost in the house.

Yep. She got possessed. Yep. And now nobody’s helping her except putting her in jail and shutting down her business.

And they’re not reading her essays about being the save… about saving the world.

I mean, what if she did save the world? We’d never know. That’s true. And the second story about the guy who is investigating ghosts in his own home says probably benign.

Yeah, I am still not convinced that this Spirit Talker app is real, but Chris and I will find out.

Yep. But something pushed a doll down some stairs. Which is the most troubling evidence of all time.

I mean, he didn’t say whether he had a cat or pets in the house. That feels like something the bird might do.

Uh-huh. Yeah, he just might have pet. Yeah. And the third and final news story about the mad science self-experimentation cancer success. Probably blessed. It’s risky. But sometimes risks pay off. And I think it did so in this case. Hopefully in the long run we all can have cancer cures.

Yeah, the dome of all chemotherapy. Yeah.

I think in the article she said she cured it with measles and some other random virus I’d never heard of before in my life. She just shook them all together, injected into the site and yeah, she’s walking around fine now. Yep, see what happens.

Doing what the doctors couldn’t do. Yeah, good for her. Yeah, I think she’s American. She should go back to the hospital and get a refund for all of that cancer treatment.

They’re not going to give her any money back, don’t worry.

It’s true. Alright, well our Lord Canarvon Curse-O-Meter is fully calibrated now, but before we get on to the main topic, we’re going to head over to the probably cursed museum and gift shop.

So since we did so well with our last spooky clown, this month’s spooky item is another clown. Kind of. Our last one sold pretty quickly, which we were surprised. So yeah, let’s give this another try.

Also, even though we’re dropping this on Black Friday weekend, it’s not Black Friday pricing.

No. The clown is wearing silver pants and has a metallic floral top and a jester’s hat with like ruffles on its neck. There are ribbons on the jester’s hat so its face and its hands and its feet are all made of porcelain. I would also like to point out that the doll broke we think while it was in our curio cabinet. Just sitting there. Yeah like Chris and I don’t remember having noticed it’s like broken when we picked it up at the thrift store.

Yeah. And then when I went to look at it because I was thinking of using it for the cursed object for episode 12 I noticed the leg was broken. So Chris has glued the leg back together but the foot is still kind of at a weird unnatural angle. Also our dog Freddy is like extremely interested in the item. He’s very interested. Which leads me to think that maybe it’s the spirit of a child. Yeah. He loves kids.

Or a peanut butter manufacturer. That’s right. It’s hard to tell with Freddy.

If you’ve been following us on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok you may have watched other pet videos where we’ve done the like testing the hauntedness of our items. But this is the first item that Freddy’s actually shown interest in. Most of the time he just kind of stares at it. Yeah.

Usually he gets bored and he wants to play. So this one held his attention.

Yeah. I think Chris will likely post the video to our social media so you can go check it out and see his reaction to the creepy jester doll clown. And maybe you’d like a ghost child of your own.

This item drops today in tandem with this episode’s release so you can go on to our ProbablyCursed gift shop at probablycursed.etsy .com.

You can also check out all our wonderful artifacts and Chris has made some fancy new vinyl stickers that are also available in our ProbablyCursed store.

It’s true. If you want to have something be labeled ProbablyCursed, I’ve made ProbablyCursed logo stickers. You can buy it off our website and you can attach it to whatever you want. Your car, your parents car. I have one of my water bottle. Yep. You can have a ProbablyCursed water bottle. Whatever you put it on there immediately comes ProbablyCursed.

And the doll from our logo, her name is Tabitha and we picked her up at the thrift store before we even began this podcast.

Yep. It’s the same doll from our logo, our show logo as well.

And that’s it for our ProbablyCursed store.

And as always, if you have a cursed object that you yourself are trying to get rid of, you’ve thrown it into the garbage eight times and it keeps showing up on the mantle every day. Mail it to us. Get in contact with us and you can send it our way and we will add it to our ProbablyCursed collection.

Or you can reach out to us by emailing probablycursedpodcast. It’s all one word at gmail.com.

Alright and now on to our main topic. For over a thousand years, a being has existed alongside mankind. He is reclusive, mysterious, and possesses incredible powers. It’s got a death curse!

That might have been the wrong one. That’s fine.

We also note now that we have just added a soundboard to our episode.

It may take a while before I figure out what sounds are where, but until then you can be entertained.

In once a year, when the nights have become long and dark, he drifts silently through our homes where he dispenses rewards for good character and for the bad, worse things are delivered. I am of course talking about the mysterious being known as Santa Claus. Now you may be saying, Chris, Santa isn’t cursed. He brings joy and happiness all over the world and you may be right. He certainly has that reputation, but consider this, Santa is old, like really, really old, and time has a way of bearing past events.

Also keep in mind he sees you when you’re sleeping and he knows when you’re awake.

Aha, the original surveillance date.

Yeah, he’s just, that doesn’t sit right with me.

So, Sheryl, can you hazard a guess as to the original year Santa was born? 735. You’re still off. Before that even. Wow. Hysterians. Hysterians. This is a bunch of crazy people in the lab.

I mean, the Santa Claus himself, Saint Nicholas, if you want to refer to him that way, is kind of the Catholic Church, so they could be Hysterians.

Hysterians date the birth of Santa to March 15th in the year 270 in Anatolia, which is currently now a province in Turkey. So he’s about 1,754 years old.

So what you’re saying is Santa isn’t white. Probably.

Nobody’s white in the Christian religion.

No. What do you mean is everyone’s white in the Christian religion?

Yeah, everybody got whitewashed. And much like Gandalf and Lord of the Rings, he’s known under many names. He was born under the name Nicholas of Myra, but he’s also known as Santa Claus, Chris Kringle, Father Christmas, Pernauel, Saint Nicholas, so, so many aliases. One moniker in particular is Nicholas the Wonderworker, due to the many miracles he was said to have performed, which is what I’ll be getting into.

He sounds like some televangelist on TV with Nicholas the Wonderworker. He comes out with his microphone and his suit and tie. He’s like, I’m gonna cure all your ailments.

It’s true. It’s covered in sequins. Yeah. He’s doing like ninja kicks in the air.

Yeah, screaming about how the devil is in everything.

Yep, so I’ll be getting into those miracles. Nice. Because these miracles may need to be re-examined as miracles. So, Sheryl, can you guess how old Santa was when he performed his first miracle? Nine. Oh, you’re kind of on the mark. Negative nine months.

Negative nine months, nice.

Where his mother, who is aging and childless and incapable of giving birth, suddenly became pregnant with him. Oh, he’s the new Jesus. Yep, he is an immaculate conception. Can you guess the age he performed his second miracle?

Probably at his birth. Exactly.

Yeah. Immediately after he was born, his mother was incredibly sick during pregnancy, but as soon as he was born, she instantly recovered.

I mean, if you talk to some other mothers out there, that’s kind of true.

Well, the church believes this is an obvious miracle. I see. It couldn’t have happened without him.

I see. I mean, I’d have to do research and go take a look, having not been pregnant myself, but yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s kind of how that works.

Santa apparently only decided to help with her health the one time, though, as both his parents ended up dying later of the plague. I think in his adulthood. Yeah. I couldn’t get an exact age.

That’s fair. Can’t cure plague, even if you’re Nicholas the Wonderworker. Santa’s third miracle happened later that same day, his birthday, when his mother brought him to the church to get baptized. He was so religious, and this is a… And when I say he, this is a little baby Santa, who’s so religious, which is a theme that runs throughout his life, he stood up on his newborn baby legs unassisted when they got to the church. And stood in place for three hours, and it’s theorized to honor the Christian Trinity.

I mean, he can’t even speak yet. How does he know what the Christian Trinity is? It’s a miracle. All right.

So you have a newborn baby just standing there for three hours.

Oh, that’s maybe how the church has started adding cherubs to everything. Just a naked child standing.

They keep doing this. Yeah. Baby Santa’s ultra-religiousness didn’t stop after his first day. As a baby, he refused to breastfeed on holy days of fasting. Mm, mm, mm. He also refused to eat until after his parents said their prayers. Imagine raising such a religious baby, which would just be so annoying. Yeah.

Unless you’re that religious yourself.

Yeah. And I’m like, oh, I’m sorry, you reminded me, okay. Mm-hmm. Unsurprisingly, when little baby Santa grows up to become a young man, he decides to become a priest. Fair. Which, if you’re that religious, I mean, your career path is kind of sad. Yeah.

That’d become a televangelist.

I don’t know if they had those back. I guess they did of wandering holy men who were like, step right up. I will cure you with the power of the Lord. So at 18, he makes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land so he can walk the same walk as his idle Jesus did so many. Well, I guess 300 years prior.

Yeah. This is fairly recent after Jesus died. But he runs into some trouble on his journey. When the ship he was traveling on got caught up in a storm that threatened to destroy it. And it’s at this moment of great peril, he performed another official miracle. And what does Santa do to survive the tempest? Do you know, Sheryl?

He gets swallowed by a whale. That’d be really cool. Yeah. I was thinking Jonah. Uh-huh.

Nope. Apparently Jonah has a dominion over the whale. Okay. Santa rebukes the storm. All right. He just straight up yells at it and the storm immediately subsides. It’s a miracle. Yeah. He has control over the weather.

I feel like if you went outside right now and yelled, stop snowing, it might stop snowing. And then it would be a miracle.

You know, I haven’t tried. It’s been snowing quite a bit. Yep. So he proceeds on from there, visits the Holy Land, does whatever priests do when they go to the Holy Land in the year 290 and he heads home. And it’s at this point in my research that I’m starting to notice Jolly Old Saint Nick enjoyed quite a privileged existence.

Uh-huh. While he’s on his return trip home, the local bishop back home dies. And the priests in charge of picking the new bishop, I guess we’re feeling lazy or just couldn’t decide who gets to be bishop. But ultimately they all come to the decision that the next priest who walks in through the door that morning automatically becomes the bishop.

And guess who walks in? Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas. And he becomes bishop right then and there. No job interview, no campaigning. He’s just handed the job.

18 years old. Yep. It’s unstoppable.

I guess so. And even as a bishop, he has a charmed life among bishops. At one point he attends what you could call a bishops convention and he gets into an argument with another bishop and slaps him in the face.

Doesn’t sound very bishopsly like.

No, but can you guess why he slapped the other bishop in the face?

Because the other bishop ate beef on Friday.

Not quite. Even worse. So what got Santa so riled up is this other bishop claimed that Jesus is not as powerful as God. Whoa. And that was fighting words. Jesus is his main man.

That’s his idol. Yeah. This is like telling a comic book nerd that Batman could defeat Superman hand-to-hand combat and he’s like, never. You can’t go around slapping bishops though. So Santa’s thrown in jail for the night only to be let go first thing the next day. It seemed that some of the other bishops had a dream that Jesus visited Santa in his cell and they took that as a sign that he should be set free.

Imagine getting out of jail because law enforcement had positive dreams about you. I mean, if there’s a way of doing that, we should get on that. Especially in places where people are a little bit more religious. It could work.

Just show up. Like I had a dream that person was playing in the playground with Jesus. They’re like, oh, we should let him go. Yeah, he should be free. As I said, he led a very privileged existence. He could stand up as soon as he was born, bossa storms around, can go around smacking bishops and he’s out on the streets the next day. And the most spectacular example of all occurred when the devil himself challenged Santa and lost.

Where’s the devil these days? He doesn’t challenge anyone anymore. Just quiet and…

Well, if you read the story, you might clue into how the devil feels less about challenging people. Fair.

It was a fiddle competition, wasn’t it?

No. Oh. It should have been. So Santa is traveling on a lonely road on his way to a town to do some bishops. And his horse got stuck in the mud and the devil appears ahead of him and commands Santa, turn and flee. How do you think Santa won against the devil? Throwing mud at him. He didn’t throw mud.

Okay. He threw his words. So much like that time on the boat with the storm, he just yells at the devil. He tells him how holy he is and how the devil has to obey him. He makes the devil not only lead the way into town, he also makes the devil his slave. In fact, in some historical portraits Santa is depicted being accompanied by the devil in chains. And this may be the origin story of Krampus. Interesting.

So what you’re saying is Santa is either Jesus reincarnated or a mutant from the X-Men.

Or maybe the second son of God with all these magical powers.

It’s fair. I guess he was a Marvel hero or villain or…

Oh yeah, Santa is in Marvel Comics. He’s the most powerful mutant.

We’ll see. I called it. Yep.

So you might think if Santa conquered the devil, what chants do regular old demons have? That’s right. Zero.

None at all. Yeah.

Santa was an accomplished exorcist.

As most people were back then.

There’s tales of how he banished demons from pagan altars. By praying so hard, the altars immediately self-destructed. There’s another tale of a demon who lived in a tree. And Santa chops open this tree with an axe and yanks the demon out with his bare hands and sends him on his way.

Sends him on his way where?

Back to hell or… Maybe the demon just moved to another tree and he’s like…

He’s just like… Go back to school.

And at this point you might be wondering is there anything Santa can’t do? And the answer is no. He’s Saint Nicholas, the wonder worker after all. And to illustrate that, I’ll relate one of his biggest feats. The one that forever cemented Santa’s affinity for children.

And it starts with a famine in Santa’s hometown. So meet was scarce. People were hungry. And some people were looking for a way to profit off the situation. An enterprising butcher lured three boys into his shop. He killed them? Dismembered them and dumped their parts into a pickling barrel with the intention to sell them as ham. Little boys taste like ham, I guess. Somehow Santa finds out. There’s not much explanation of his detective work in the ancient legends. But he discovers the barrel of pickled children’s parts and he lays his hands on the barrel.

And then the children become multiplied and there’s enough meat to feed the whole village.

That’s a very different story. That’s Santa the nightmare worker. Yes, just checking. He lays his hands on the barrel of pickled children’s parts and says a quick prayer to his bestie, Jesus. And the children magically come back to life. Not a scratch on them, but probably smell a little bit briny. For the rest of their lives. So Santa can resurrect the dead.

So he is Jesus.

But I guess in the Bible Jesus only did it the one time to that one guy. This guy did three at once. He was like, I’m three times better. I can do all these things.

Well that just means that Santa Claus has to die in a fabulous way like Jesus.

There’s not a whole lot that says where the butcher ended up. But there are legends from France saying that the butcher was forced to become his servant forever after. And I guess the devil wasn’t enough staff for Santa. Alas, however powerful Santa was in life, he wasn’t immortal. He shed his mortal form on December 6th in the year 343 at the age of 73. Good for him. So he got old at a time where not a lot of people did. But even dead, Santa’s powers didn’t fade.

His very bones secreted a sweet smelling fluid on the anniversary of his death. Caducanes. Yeah.

Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like. And even to this day apparently they still exude that liquid. The fluid has great healing power. So a skeleton was possessed and guarded by the church until the bones were stolen by a bunch of sailors 700 years later.

Disappointing. By the 1500s, Santa, finally freed from his limiting human form, had already started his annual tradition of giving gifts to the children of the world. And he’s sometimes accompanied by strange characters. The devil we now know is Krampus, Black Pete, which is a black guy who will kidnap and take bad children to Spain.

That’s the worst place to go. It’s even funnier because Santa is a Spanish word for saint. It’s true. Yeah.

Alright, you’re going to Spain. Get in, get in the sled. He’s also accompanied by La Perra Foutarde, a sinister old man with wild hair and beard, with a wild hair and a wild beard, dressed in black, who will whip bad children and hand out coal. Nice. In Bavaria, he’s accompanied by Nicolo Weebel, which is just a boy dressed as a girl, but they’re accompanied by 12 beings dressed in animal masks and furs who will whip everyone in sight after the presents are delivered.

Why aren’t Santa Claus traditions that cool here? It’s true. We’re missing out.

I guess maybe these people only work like local beats and none of them wanted to come to the New World. Fair.

Plus, maybe Santa likes us better because he’s technically Canadian, I guess.

The rest of the legends we already know about Santa, secret polar base, an elf run manufacturing plant, and at some point he hung up his bishop’s hat and got married. And I couldn’t find an origin story for Mrs. Claus, so.

It was probably the Coca-Cola Company. They made the image of Santa that we know and love today.

So here’s what I present to the Curse-O-Meter. Is this man, who can raise the dead, travels around with a strange entourage, enslaves demons, controls storms, has a magical skeleton, and can even will himself into being born? Is this a cursed being? Let’s see what the Curse-O-Meter says. Please stand by. And the Curse-O-Meter says, probably benign.

Yeah, he didn’t really do anything terribly awful. I mean, he’s got demon friends, but who doesn’t?

It’s true. He took the devil off the streets and put him to work. Yeah. So he’s not going around causing, bearing dinosaur bones to trick people.

Some of the people that he has who follow him around are a bit shady, but again, who doesn’t have friends like that?

Yep, all sorts of weird greasy people attach themselves to great men. And like in one of the legends I read about him resurrecting the pickled children, apparently it happened like a year later. So everybody had written off those boys as being dead for like a whole year. Oh, and then they just… And then Santa just shows up and he’s like, you’re back to life.

How many of… how much of those children have been eaten? Like it feels weird to pickle the children and then just leave them there for a year.

Oh yeah, what if they’re like missing an ear? Yeah. Because some guy ate it.

And then all of a sudden that like reassembles from wherever the waste collected and then your ear smells like poop.

This is sort of backsliding into probably cursed. Well, that was just sort of a fun, silly topic for the episode. I’d already known that there were bizarre legends around Santa Claus and it was fun going into it and accumulating it. The whole thing about him besting the devil just by yelling at him, that I had never heard of before. But apparently it’s been countered in a few different spots, so I knew I had to include it. It wasn’t just something that somebody made up somewhere.

Yeah, well done, Chris. It was fantastic. And I hope everyone is going to have a spooky, cursed Christmas.

I hope all of you who celebrate as such, December 6th is Santa’s death day. Or what is it? December 5th is supposed to be Krampus Noct. Yes. Where men dress up as Krampus and go around, beat children with reeds. You can do the same. It’s allowed. But just the one day.

And if you’re an M and said maybe you’ll see us at Krampus Noct, we’ve gone the last few years. It’s fun time.

All of you have a good Christmas. Our next episode will release on January 1st. Until then, you can keep up to date on all of our comings and goings on our social media. We got a TikTok, Instagram, and also started a Tumblr recently and we’re getting middling attention on there.

Pretty good. You can check out our new website. We’ve updated the web address to probablycursed.net.

And if you need to contact us, reach us at probablycursedpodcast at gmail.com. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.